Fall - Virginia Foundation for the Humanities

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BackStory:
American History
Civil Rights
Memorial
Roots
Summer Seminar
VABook! 2009
Speakers
The Newsletter of the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities
Fall 2008
Virginia Arts of the Book Center:
Vision of a Printing Community
By K ev in McFa dden
If you visit Charlottesville on any given Saturday
and wander into those low brick buildings that
once were the Frank Ix and Sons textile factory,
you may catch a glimpse of something easily
confused with a mirage.
A
t the end of a dim corridor that still harkens to the site’s
industrial past, you will see swaying bamboo leaves bathed
in sunlight. Next to them, a glassed-in studio suffused by the
same generous glow, now perhaps beginning to hum with
the morning sounds of the printers and artists who arrive with book chat,
news from their various provinces, and, as always, long rolls of paper.
They are warming up machines and testing inks that were the print
technology of half a century ago—and not that far from Gutenberg—
achieving results impossible to replicate with contemporary commercial
methods and today’s desktop computers. This is the Virginia Arts of
the Book Center, a working studio and print shop where community
members share knowledge of printmaking and book arts. As a program
of the VFH Center for the Book, the VABC promotes the values of the
humanities through appreciation of visual and verbal literacy, creativity,
and the fostering of traditional and contemporary book arts skills.
The organization traces back to the early 1990s, when Virginia
Festival of the Book co-founder Cal Otto, Charlottesville artist and
designer Josef Beery, and Rare Book School founder Terry Belanger
rescued a Vandercook press, type cabinets, and related equipment
being discarded as surplus by the University of Virginia. As printing technology, cold type was outmoded and slow. At the same time,
Beery, Otto, and Belanger knew that this machinery was still quite
valuable to printers.
$
$
$
Artist Dean Dass applies glue to a book binding.
Continued on page 2
Virginia Foundation
for the Humanities
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2
Vision of a Printing Community
Continued from cover
P r e s i d e nt
Sheryl Hayes, Di r e cto r
Lynda Myers, P r o g r a m
Virginia Arts of the Book Center:
These rescue stories are familiar
to printers and not always successful.
The scene is repeated across the country
as old equipment is being forced even
from the unused corners of a print shop or
art studio to the scrapyards. While access to
the equipment grew scarcer, typecases were
most visible as display mechanisms for thimble
collections at yard sales, and those few with the
knowledge of what was yet possible sought the help
of institutions to preserve and protect this vital link to
printing tradition.
“Some studio space became open at the
McGuffey Art Center so the two of us [Otto and he]
decided to apply as joint artists with the intention
of creating a public access letterpress studio,” recalls
Beery of this time. “The idea was to create a center
where artists and craftspeople could have access to letterpress equipment for little cost.” In 1995, the VFH
became involved in helping the fledgling organization
stay alive, eventually incorporating the VABC under
the Foundation’s auspices.
The VABC survived for years underground, quite
literally. In a room about the size of half a school bus,
the bulky equipment gave a small room for classes.
Members of the UVa faculty including renowned
book and print artists Johanna Drucker and Dean
Dass began to consult and coordinate programs and
resources. During this time the VABC’s first printer in
residence, Debra Fabrizzi, came aboard.
The Community Grows
machines—opened in 2004 and is now an
oasis for aspiring artists and craftspeople
keeping alive this spirit. The VABC has
attracted about two dozen members
who support the space with donation
and volunteer time: authors, photographers, rare book enthusiasts, retired
printers, and an increasing number with
MFAs in book arts and writing. Students come from
all corners of the Commonwealth to attend classes in
what has become the most accessible public printing
studio in the state. And they are welcomed.
“The VABC has created a community of support and creativity that I feel are invaluable to the
artist who is not part of an institutional program,”
says Adolfson, who oversees the website and class
schedule that appears online three times a year. She
helped plan and instruct the first weeklong advanced
seminars in the book arts with Johanna Drucker and
Lindsey Mears (“Hands-On and Critical Concepts
in Letterpress Artists’ Books”). A week later, VFHliaison Kevin McFadden, Karen Kevorkian, and
Bonnie Bernstein held “Printing for Poets: Creating a
Broadside.”
Poet Sarah Knorr says finding VFH programs is
“like finding ‘my tribe.’” She has participated in many
VFH book programs—Sacred Bearings, Tough Times
Companion, and the Virginia Festival of the Book—
but the VABC holds a special place: “Just to have a
seat in the room where so many deeply informed,
visionary and generous minds are dancing levitates me.
When the more experienced members reach out to
teach beginners like me, it connects us all to the long
legacy of those who have invented ways to literally ‘get
the word out’ to others.”
What began to distinguish the VABC in the next
phase of development was the diverse core of artist/
volunteers. This core, including illustrator Frank Riccio, poets Karen Kevorkian,
Barbara Heritage and Angie Hogan, artist
John Bylander, designer/book artist Kristin
Adolfson, joined with the board to create a
working model for more public access to the
equipment. As organized classes, a membership structure, and group projects began to
emerge, a VFH-liaison appeared to facilitate
programming. When the VABC would
require a new home, that home was found in
the Ix Project’s diverse mixed-use community with more generous support from the Ix
Moveable type? The VFH/VABC crew moving heavy drawers of lead in the winter of 2003.
founders.
back: Rob Vaughan, Kim Tryka, Karen Kevorkian, Kristin Adolfson, Dean Dass, Angie Hogan,
The new studio—a glassy and open
Maggie Sullivan, and Kevin McFadden. middle: Johanna Drucker. front: Frank Riccio, Josef
Beery, Barbara Heritage, and Carsten Clark.
housing for its many weighty, antique
Photo by Stacy Evans
Fall 2008
Sarah Knorr uses a manual proofing press during a weeklong summer seminar.
“Just to have a seat in the room
where so many deeply informed,
visionary and generous minds
are dancing levitates me. When
the more experienced members
reach out to teach beginners
like me, it connects us all to the
long legacy of those who have
invented ways to literally ‘get the
word out’ to others.” — Sarah Knorr
5:30 pm – 8 pm
(auctions at 6 pm & 7 pm)
Virginia Arts
of the Book Center
977 Second Street SE
(The IX Project)
Refreshments served
Admission Free, $5
donation recommended
More than Words
Words, like printing organizations, can be well
hidden, but they are nearly impossible to erase. The
language of lead type—leading, kerning, ligature—is
still very much alive as the terminology of digital
typography. And many expressions in the visual arts—
lithography, etching, woodblock printing—are more
understandable through experience than memory.
Part of the VABC philosophy is that when students
work with the physical equipment and processes
which created these terms, the language becomes
palpable, opening the learner to an experience and the
history of printing that a traditional classroom simply
cannot replicate.
The foresight of the VABC founders seems
justified in light of the resurgence of excitement and
expanded cultural awareness surrounding print culture. Witness the documentary films Helvetica (2007),
Typeface (2008), and Proceed and Be Bold! (2008) that
highlight the impact of fonts on our culture and the
powerful stories of the designers and printers who still
engage this process.
The unspoken links between word and image
became news as the 2008 presidential campaigns chose
their own fonts, fonts seen on every bumper sticker
and poster for the visual impression they convey. John
McCain’s Optima (a sans-serif face with bold strokes,
as seen on the Vietnam War Memorial) went up
against Barack Obama’s Gotham (a simple, open, and
uncluttered face). You may also have noticed also the
“retro” wood-style font that has become the chosen
emblem for CNN presidential election coverage.
Strolling through the VABC, words and letters
cease to be forms of abstraction, calling out to us
November 14
The Annual
Raucous Auction
During this evening of fun
and entertainment, meet the
students, artists, and friends
of the VABC and the work they
create during the year. Up for
auction: A week in an apartment in Paris, books and prints,
framed artwork, a class at the
Rare Book School, portfolio
collections of VABC group
projects (including this year’s
work on Frankenstein). We also
salute in memoriam our fellow
printer and first professional
member, John McCarthy.
Go online for more details
and a list of items:
Instructor Garrett Queen conducts a lesson on the VABC’s
century-old Chandler & Price, a mechanical pedal-driven press
still in superb working order.
in tall letters on the many posters and broadsides.
LEAD IS NOT DEAD, reads one of the vigilant
among them. This is a Printing Office, another intones,
Crossroads of Civilization. Refuge of All the Arts. Words
are, as we like to say at the VFH, the building blocks
of the humanities—and at the VABC they are blocks
you can put in your hands.
Experience their power for yourself on November 14 at 5:30 p.m. for a VABC signature event in the
studio—the Raucous Auction—which in addition to
being an evening of art and entertainment helps raise
awareness and funding for this unique project. One
thing you can always say about VABC might even be
our bumper-sticker: “We leave an impression.”
VirginiaBookArts.org
Book artist Johanna Drucker entertains
as the Raucous Auctioneer.
3
BackStory’s Backstory:
Making American History Live
b y to n y f i e l d & c a th e r i n e moor e
I
t’s a Tuesday morning in
VFH’s media suite, and
producers of BackStory with
the American History Guys are
huddled around a phone for a conference call with the show’s hosts.
Under discussion is an upcoming
episode of the new radio show
about the history of America’s war
veterans, set for broadcast the
week of Veterans’ Day.
Where to Listen?
Listen online at
backstoryradio.org
The History Guys are
constellated thousands of miles
apart—Peter Onuf in Oxford, Ed
Ayers in Richmond, and Brian
Balogh here in Charlottesville—
but they come together, as usual,
in harmony as they toss out their
ideas for the show. Ayers (Back-
Story’s 19th Century Guy) suggests
an interview with a member of
the Sons of Confederate Veterans. Balogh (20th Century Guy)
mentions the G.I. Bill, and its
discriminatory application to African-American vets after WWII.
Onuf (18th Century Guy) wonders
about the special status veterans get
when they run for office, and the
Guys mull the names of Revolutionary War scholars who might
join them to discuss how George
Washington ushered in a new way
of thinking about vets.
Key questions emerge: Do
we honor veterans of popular
wars more than we honor soldiers
returning from unpopular ones?
Do vets have special credibility
as critics of wars or as political
office-holders? How have the challenges of coming home changed
over time? Producers take it all in,
feverishly scribbling notes on their
yellow pads.
The brainstorming session
has an air of inception about it, but
the life of this particular episode
began much earlier, with a comment on BackStory’s website—How
about something on veterans? From
the beginning, an interactive and
collaborative web strategy has been
central to BackStory’s mission. Not
only are visitors to the website
encouraged to suggest future show
topics and share their thoughts
on shows already aired; they are
actively encouraged to weigh in on
shows still in production. Comments are often integrated into the
show production, and “commenters” are frequently invited to join
the History Guys on the air.
Unlike history programs
presided over by experts who
give an official account of the
past from “on high,” BackStory
approaches history as a moving
target, a work-in-progress that
is constantly being re-written by
successive generations of scholars.
Accordingly, BackStory sets out not
simply to deliver historical findings,
but to embody historical method.
“Knowledge may be the car we’re
driving,” says BackStory producer
Ed Ayers
Brian Balogh • 20 th Century Guy
Associate Professor of History at UVa;
Director of the Governing America in a
Global Era Program at The Miller Center of
Public Affairs
Sign up for our free
podcast in iTunes
radioiq.org
Radio IQ , Central Virginia
Sundays, 3 pm
wmra.org
WMRA, Central/
Southwest Virginia
Saturdays, 4 pm
whro.org/home/
publicradio/whrv/
WHRV, Norfolk
Wednesdays, 1 pm
Peter Onuf • 18th Century Guy
Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation
Professor of History at UVa; 2008-2009
Harmsworth Professor, The Queen’s College,
Oxford University
4
• 19 th Century Guy
President of the University of Richmond;
Formerly Hugh P. Kelly Professor of History
and Dean of the College and Graduate School
of Arts and Sciences at UVa
Fall 2008
Tony Field, “but questions
are its real engine.”
BackStory’s own backstory
goes back to August 2005,
when VFH’s Director of Media
Programs and BackStory’s
Executive Producer Andrew
Wyndham hatched the idea of
bringing specialists and non-academics together in a conversation
about America’s past. Wyndham
approached Onuf and Ayers, then
the Dean of UVA’s College and
Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. They enthusiastically signed
onto the project, with one condition: they needed a 20th-century
expert to fill in the holes of their
collective expertise. And they knew
just the guy.
Over the course of the next
three years, Wyndham oversaw an
extensive development and piloting phase that included a series
of focus groups with listeners and
public radio program directors
throughout the country. In early
2008, he hired Field, a public
radio producer from New York
City with years of experience
on successful national programs
including NPR’s On the Media and
Radio Lab, to lead the project. He
also brought on board Associate
Producer Rachel Quimby, who
had gotten her start in radio as an
undergraduate several years earlier
at WKCR in New York, where she
created Grey Matters, a program
on psychology-related themes.
Assistant Producer Catherine
Moore, a veteran of historical
archives, libraries, and humanities
organizations, joined the team a
few months later after completing
an MFA in creative writing. Based
on feedback from the development
phase, the team decided that the
best approach for the show would
be to try and make the study of
history relevant by connecting it
to current events. Each week, the
Got a question
for the American
History Guys?
Visit backstoryradio.org,
call 1-888-257-8851, or email
[email protected]
History Guys would tear a topic
from the headlines, and spend
an hour reflecting on that topic’s
historical roots.
BackStory premiered on Virginia stations in June of this year.
Eleven episodes were produced
for the show’s first season, and
included shows on timely topics
such as “Controversial Wars,”
“Environmental Crisis,” “Family Values,” and “Punishment in
America.” Shows have featured
interviews with prominent scholars
from around the nation, as well as
what the production team refers to
as “practitioners” – non-academics
whose personal or professional lives
qualify them to share their own
stories about a given week’s topic.
(In the “punishment” show, for
example, Balogh discussed racial
disparities in incarceration rates
with Washington D.C. Corrections Director Devon Brown, and
conducted a roadside interview
with members of the Charlottesville-Albermarle Jail work crew.)
But the true grounding elements of
each show are its call-in segments,
in which curious listeners around
the country join the Guys with
their questions and stories.
In addition to having
complementary areas of expertise,
the Guys also represent different
approaches to the study of history. Balogh kicks off each week’s
discussion in the here-and-now,
framing questions and acting as
the show’s main pivot between the
present and the past. Onuf comes
at current events with an intellectual historian’s eye, highlighting
the extent to which many of today’s
issues are echoes of struggles that
took place at the nation’s founding.
Ayers always seems ready with a
compelling story to illustrate the
big ideas. “I think of myself as a
social history guy,” he says, “focusing on people and parts of life
often left out of the big stories. As
a result, my perspective tends to be
kaleidoscopic, complementing the
laser-like vision of Peter and the
X-ray-like vision of Brian, both of
whom see structures and ideas with
great clarity.”
Of the History Guys’ unique
collaboration, Onuf notes that
“History tends to be a solitary
enterprise for historians. Talking with the Guys enables us to
make good use of all those lonely
hours—years!—and have fun at the
same time. At its best, historical
study illuminates connections; the
connections we make with each
other, and with each other’s work is
the big pay-off for me. I hope our
audience picks up on some of that
excitement.”
After a short production
break, BackStory returned to the
airwaves in November for an
eight-week series of new programs. Listeners to the current
series can expect to hear episodes
on the history of voting, veterans,
energy, and alcohol, among others.
Central Virginia stations Radio
IQ, WMRA, and WHRV will
continue to broadcast the show
weekly (see sidebar for broadcast
times); those outside the listening area can stream archived
shows from BackStory’s website
(backstoryradio.org) or sign up
for the weekly podcast in the
iTunes store.
Stay tuned – with luck
BackStory will be on the air coastto-coast sometime very soon.
Why did Thomas Jefferson think the
Constitution should expire every thirty
years? Find out on “I Owe, I Owe: Debt
in America”
Get the backstory on the term
“jaywalking” on “Traffic: How We Get
From Here to There”
Does it surprise you that in 1900 less
than half of American families had
a go-to-work dad and stay-at-home
mom? Hear more on “(The Invention of)
Traditional Family Values.”
Did you know that Martha Jefferson
was Sally Hemings’s half-sister? Learn
more about the Jefferson-Hemings
controversy on “Black & White: The
Idea of Racial Purity.”
Major production support for BackStory has been provided by the David A. Harrison Fund for the President’s Initiatives at the University of Virginia;
the Perry Foundation, Incorporated; Cary Brown-Epstein and the W. L. Lyons Brown, Jr. Charitable Foundation; Caroleen Feeney; Marcus and Carole Weinstein;
Jay M. Weinberg; Trish and David Crowe; Claire Gargalli and David Carley; and an anonymous donor.
5
Remembering History,
Making History
By Dav i d Be a r i n ge r
F
or 35 years, the VFH has been deeply involved in exploring Virginia’s history,
especially its hidden or untold stories. On occasion, this work has proved
to be history-making in its own right or has brought us into the center of
historic events, such as the dedication of the Civil Rights Memorial on Capitol
Square in Richmond this past summer.
On July 20-21, 2008, Virginia took
a bold step toward acknowledging the
legacy of racial segregation in the state
that would have been unthinkable a
generation ago.
Through a public symposium and
the unveiling of a bronze statue honoring
those who led the fight to overturn the
doctrine of “separate but equal,” the Old
Dominion showed how far it has come
since a group of students led by 16-yearold Barbara Johns walked out of their
high school in Prince Edward County to
demand equal (but still separate) school
facilities for black and white students.
It also explicitly acknowledged that
the struggle for racial equality is not over.
These events were organized by the
6
Capitol Square Civil Rights Memorial
Foundation which also raised the funds
to establish this Memorial. The statue
itself portrays the student leaders—
Barbara Johns and others—and the
attorneys, Oliver Hill and Spotswood
Robinson, who took up their cause in
a case that later became part of the
Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board decision.
It also movingly represents an interracial group of students who seem to be
walking, almost literally, out of the statue
into a hopeful future.
For more than a decade, the VFH
has worked with organizations such as
the Robert R. Moton Museum in Farmville to explore this part of our collective
history and to help ensure that the story
being commemorated in the Civil Rights
Memorial is known to all Virginians.
So we were honored and delighted
to be asked by the Civil Rights Memorial Foundation to be present at the
dedication ceremony and to record both
formal and informal interviews with
those who attended.
These included well known figures
such as former Virginia governors Linwood Holton and Mark Warner. They
also included members of the Johns family and former Prince Edward students
who had been part of the 1951 strike, or
had experienced the closing of the public
schools in “massive resistance” to federally mandated school desegregation.
And they
also included
younger people,
who have no
memory of these
events but who
were there as
witnesses to a
ceremony of deep
historic meaning,
aware that the
course of their
own lives had
been changed by
what happened
in Prince Edward
County more
than 50 years
before.
Fall 2008
One face of the Civil Rights Memorial,
showing attorneys Oliver Hill and
Spottswood Robinson.
The essential question we asked of
each of these interviewees was: “What
does this event mean to you?” Their
responses are a powerful testament to
the changes that were set in motion by
the student strike; to the cost of these
changes, paid especially by those whose
education was deferred or in many cases
denied altogether; and to the hope as
well as the need for reconciliation—in
part through education.
It is significant, as Governor Timothy Kaine pointed out in his remarks,
that this Monument is the first one on
Capitol Square to depict African Americans; the first to depict children; and the
first to depict women as central figures.
VFH worked in close partnership
with members of the Board and staff
of the Robert R. Moton Museum in
Farmville to collect these interviews. The
Museum, which is located in the building where the student strike took place,
will be the permanent archival home for
the recordings, and over the next several
months, VFH and Moton will work
together, exploring how this important
archival record and resource can be used
to advance new educational programs we
and others might develop.
We’re grateful to the Museum’s
leadership and especially to the Capitol
Square Civil Rights Memorial Foundation for this opportunity.
Audience and speakers (including Gov. Tim Kaine, seated far right, and Judith C. Anderson,
at the podium) at the dedication ceremony on July 21, 2008.
All photos for this article courtesy of the Virginia Civil Rights Memorial Foundation.
7
Roots
A Summer Seminar
Going Wide and Deep
B y C a rol y n C a d e s
S
heila Bowles teaches in the
Offender Aid and Restoration
program of the CharlottesvilleAlbemarle Regional Jail, where
she prepares young people to pass the
G.E.D. Leslie Taliaferro, teaching in the
affluent Philadelphia suburb of Narberth,
PA, brings her extensive experience of
traveling and teaching abroad into her
elementary school classroom. Felisha Bell
works with at-risk young women in New
York City, focusing on program development in English to supplement public
school program content.
What purpose has brought them all
together? They and 11 other elementary
and high-school teachers participated in
the Roots 2008 NEH Summer Seminar for
Teachers, ninth in a series of institutes for
K-12, college and university instructors
sponsored by the Virginia Foundation for
the Humanities and conducted by Professor Joseph C. Miller, the T. Cary Johnson,
Jr. Professor of History at the University
of Virginia.
The Roots seminar began in 1998, arising from Miller’s collaboration with current
VFH Senior Scholar Jerome Handler. Its
focus is the African past of those enslaved
and brought to the New World: their religious beliefs, conceptions of the afterlife,
family relationships, and knowledge of the
environment and what it could yield. In
Handler’s words, “When shorn of all their
material goods, enslaved peoples weren’t
shorn of their memories…they needed to
reconstruct their lives under difficult conditions.” Miller named the seminar Roots to
emphasize how African heritages informed
lives in the New World under the oppressive and restrictive conditions of slavery,
from Brazil to the area that would become
the United States.
8
front row, from left: Leroy (Steven) Toliver, Carolyn Alexander, Dorothy Morris-Ross, Leslie Taliaferro, Clayton Perry, Jocelyn Jones.
Kevin Lydy, Robert Hardmond, Professor Joseph C. Miller, Alicia Floyd, Lawrence Abbott, Jaisha Bruce,
Geoffrey Winikur, Amanda Mushal (Administrative Associate).
top row, from left:
For the first Roots seminar, Handler
prepared a slide lecture based on his collection of 250 images illustrating the lives
of enslaved Africans, which he had used in
teaching an undergraduate class on New
World slavery at Southern Illinois University (Carbondale). Miller suggested he have
these images scanned and digitized, and
they became the basis of the website, The
Atlantic Slave Trade and Slave Life in the
Americas: A Visual Record (www.slaveryimages.org), which has since grown to over
1,200 images and receives thousands of hits
from all over the world.
NEH funding for Roots includes
administrative support—provided this year
by Amanda Mushal, a graduate student in
Southern history at UVa—and a participant stipend for the five-week session, out
of which participants pay for their lodgings
and meals. The 2008 session for K-12
teachers alternates in the series with those
intended for college and university instructors, held in odd years.
Miller’s role is that of a facilitator. This
year he quickly established an informal
and comfortable rapport with the seminar
group, welcoming participants and VFH
friends with a delicious meal of African
and Africa-inspired foods at his home. In
the seminar room at the VFH, Miller’s
energy and inclusiveness provided a supportive environment for the lively exchange
of ideas that occurred there daily.
Miller has published widely on Africa
and the history of slavery, and teaches the
history of early Africa, slavery, and the slave
trade at UVa. With his leadership, and with
presentations from visiting scholars, the
Roots seminar squarely confronts the challenging issues of enslaved Africans in U.S.
history and culture. Discussions include the
Fall 2008
selling of men and women into New World
slavery by competing African peoples, the
European slave trade and its economics, the
agony and dislocation of the Middle Passage, and the social and economic legacies
of slavery today. Sessions for K-12 teachers
inevitably revolve around issues of, in Miller’s words, “family narratives, contemporary
American culture,
state SOLS, and the
state of the public
education system,”
while the seminars for
college and university
educators have a more
academic focus.
Seeking to dispel
preconceptions, and
proceeding on the
assumption that race
is deeply embedded
in American culture,
Miller’s intention is to
deal openly with the “prevalence of race in
this subject,” and to let participants know
that, in his words, “whatever your position
is, you’ll be respected.”
Roots offers an alternative to what
Miller considers the tragedy of the
marginalization of this history within the
scholarship and instruction of American
history, providing rich resources and a
pedagogic model that teachers can take
back to their own classrooms and communities. Participants have full access to
the digital resources and collections of the
University of Virginia, and Miller provides
an extensive syllabus, with books made
available at the UVa Bookstore. These readings serve as the background for Miller’s
and his guests’ presentations and the lively
discussions they provoke.
Guest speakers and topics during the
summer 2008 session included Professor
Michelle Kisliuk of the UVa Department
of Music, who illustrated African polyrhythmic sensibilities by forming the group
into a band of Ewe (Ghana) polyrhythmic
percussionists and then into a group of
pygmies singing in Central African forests.
Professor Babatunde Lawal of Virginia
Commonwealth University showed slides
of African art and its many branches,
speaking compellingly of its spiritual and
expressive content, and Yale Professor Robert Harms presented his socio-economic
study of the Diligent, a 1730s French
slaving vessel. At the end of the first week,
the Roots group toured the African Voices
exhibit at the Smithsonian and visited the
National Museum of
African Art.
The culmination
of the seminar was the
presentation of individual projects, intended
to be used as tools in
the classroom, which
participants developed
using the resources
made available during
the five-week seminar.
“Participants arrive with
more clearly formulated
projects every year,”
commented Miller, and with increased technical sophistication. This year, Texas high
school teacher Steven Toliver produced
a 70-minute video called “Fractures: The
Demise of the Communal Ethos,” focusing
on contemporary urban culture, and Sheila
Bowles created a video called “Teaching
the Unteachable: Through Students’ Eyes.”
Other projects focused on slave narrative as
folk religion, the school as community, and
the African Diaspora in Latin America.
Miller commented that seminar participants are doing the hard work of “trying
to build community,” and are coming from
schools where they represent tiny minorities
in what they seek to teach. He too gains
from the Roots seminars; conversations in
and out of the seminar room sensitize him
to the concerns of the diverse audiences he
addresses, making him a better teacher and
expanding his intellectual horizons. Teachers come to Roots in search of a shared
vision and a sense of community. What
they experience during the five weeks is an
atmosphere of mutual respect, intellectual
stimulation, collegiality, and shared purpose.
They leave Charlottesville with new friends,
new ideas, new teaching resources, and
renewed courage.
What teachers
experience during
the five weeks is
an atmosphere of
mutual respect,
intellectual
stimulation,
collegiality, and
shared purpose.
Sheila Bowles and Dorothy Morris-Ross
Robert Hardmond presenting his work
Leroy (Steven) Toliver and Joe Miller
9
Fifteen Years
for VABook!
I
nterest in the March 18-22, 2009
Virginia Festival of the Book is
high, if the volume on our muchanticipated registration day was any
indication. The Festival luncheon for 500
with Virginia native Adriana Trigiani
sold out in about a day. Tickets are still
available for the Crime Wave Luncheon,
Business Breakfast, and Authors Reception if you act quickly.
Keep watching the website
(vabook.org) this fall as we announce our
featured speakers. The best way not to miss a beat is to sign up
for the VABook-Newsletter through the website.
Buy a beautiful book/shopping bag and
support the Virginia Festival of the Book.
These bags are being sponsored by Barracks Road
Shopping Center in Charlottesville, Virginia and the parent
company, Federal Realty Investment Trust. The beautiful
tan bags are made from recycled materials and are
perfect for carrying your favorite books, groceries or
anything else!
Bags cost $10 and include more than $200 in free
coupons for stores at Barracks Road Shopping
Center at select shops; visit vabook.org for details.
The bag pays for itself!
Go to vabook.org to order tickets to the following:
Festival Luncheon
Sold Out, Waitlist available online
Thursday, March 19 • 11:45 am –1:30 pm, Omni Hotel • $50
Adriana Trigiani, author of the forthcoming Very Valentine, has
written four novels about her home Big Stone Gap, and three other
novels featuring Italian-American families coming of age in America.
Crime Wave Mystery Luncheon
Saturday, March 21 • Noon –1:30 pm, Omni Hotel • $50
Brad Meltzer, best-selling author of The Book of Lies, has written
five other thrillers, and four comic books. Publisher’s Weekly #1.
Business Breakfast
Wednesday, March 18 • 7:30 – 9 am, Omni Hotel • $30
Dan Ariely, author of Predictably Irrational, a New York Times bestseller, is a student of behavioral economics, who currently teaches
at Duke University.
Authors Reception
Saturday, March 21 • 6 – 7:30 pm • $35
New Location: Sage Moon Gallery, Downtown Charlottesville
Hosts TBA
10
Big Read in Virginia
Free Resources Available
T
he VFH Center for the Book
and Virginia First Lady Anne
Holton invite Virginians across the
Commonwealth to participate in
the “Big Read in Virginia” by reading together
Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were
Watching God and find out why this 1937
book has become a modern classic.
The VFH is one of 208 organizations—
and the only statewide program—to receive a Big
Read grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Institute
for Museum and Library Services in partnership with Arts Midwest.
Alice Walker says of Their Eyes Were Watching God, “There is no
book more important to me than this one.” Rediscovered in the early
1970s, the novel provides timeless insights on the forcefulness of relationships, the power of language, and the resilience of the human spirit.
Information on how to obtain free reading and educational resources for your community and school can be found at
virginiafoundation.org/bookcenter.
Of special interest this year is the “Big Read for Little Readers”
featuring Roy Makes a Car based on a folktale uncovered by Hurston
and written by Virginia author Mary E. Lyons. Roy Makes a Car also
was selected to represent Virginia at the National Book Festival in September in Washington, DC. Lyons is also the author of a young adult
biography of Hurston called Sorrow’s Kitchen.
Read. Be Inspired. Write Back.
T
he annual Letters About Literature reading and writing competition has begun. Students in grades 4-12 are encouraged
to think of a favorite book or story and then write a personal
letter to the author explaining how that author’s work
changed the reader’s way of thinking about the world or themselves.
Three state winners will be invited to read their winning letters
aloud at the March 18, 2009 Opening Ceremony of the Virginia Festival
of the Book in Charlottesville. Each will also be given a cash prize and a
Target gift card and automatically are entered into the national competition. National winners also earn for their school or community library
reading promotion grants. Last year, 11th grade student Courtney Harnett won a $1,000 reading promotion grant for her local library, the L.E.
Smoot Memorial Library in King George County.
Nationally, Letters About Literature is sponsored by the Center for
the Book in the Library of Congress in partnership with Target.
The submission deadline is December 6, 2008. Entry forms and
guidelines can be found at virginiafoundation.org/bookcenter.
A 36-page Teacher’s Guide and examples of previous winners can be
found at that same website.
Fall 2008
D onor
P rofile
New Season, New Places and Faces for VFH Staff
As fall leaves began to rustle and stir in the cool breezes, VFH folk did the same.
This favored season has taken some familiar faces to new places and swept in some new faces to get to know.
After more than eight years at the
VFH, Andrew Chancey has moved
to the Miller Center of Public Affairs
at the University of Virginia, where
he is serving as the Assistant
Director for Finance and Program
Analysis. Andrew joined the VFH
in January 2000 as the Project
Coordinator for the ultimately successful effort to establish the South
Atlantic Humanities Center, located
at the VFH. He became Associate
Director in 2002 and Director of
Planning and Management in 2004.
In this latter role, Andrew had
responsibility for the budget, personnel, facilities, and related operations
and had oversight of Encyclopedia
Virginia. At the Miller Center, Andrew
is in charge of finance and personnel.
Christina Draper, Director of the
Virginia African American Heritage
Program, came to the VFH in
September 2004, and left this fall
to began her studies in the MA/PhD
program in American Studies at the
College of William and Mary. Four of
Christina’s favorite projects over the
years were the second printing and
new exhibition for Don’t Grieve After
Me, which is traversing the state of
Virginia; the Fayette Area Historical
Initiative that formed a partnership to
use the humanities — literature, art,
history, music, culture, but in this case,
especially local history — to foster
community development and re-development in the Martinsville area; her
work with the VA Network of African
American Museums; and, the redesign
of the African American Heritage
Database (AAHeritageVA.org).
Newcomers to VFH are already
settling into the community and
their diverse responsibilities. Peter
Hedlund is the Encyclopedia Virginia’s
new database and web applications
programmer. Peter came to us from
the Darden School of Business, where
since 1999 he was a developer for
the Instructional Technology Group.
Before he joined Darden, he worked
with Michael Tuite (who helped create
Jerry Handler’s Trans-Atlantic Slave
Trade site) in the Digital Media Lab in
Clemons Library. He created digital
resources and tools for classroom
use. In 1998, Peter received his MA
in Russian Literature from UVa and,
like some of our other Encyclopedia
Virginia folks, was called to be a
computing humanist.
In the Center for Research and
Education, Hilary Holladay has
been named Senior Program
Fellow for 2008-2009. Hilary was
a VFH Fellow last spring as well
as in the spring of 1998. In her
new position, she is directing the
Fellowship Program while continuing her research and writing on the
literature of the Beat Movement.
Before coming to the VFH, she was
a professor of English and the director of the Jack and Stella Kerouac
Center for American Studies at
the University of Massachusetts
in Lowell. Her most recent book is
Wild Blessings: The Poetry of Lucille
Clifton. She is currently writing a
biography of the Beat Movement
icon and raconteur Herbert Huncke.
Fall 2008 VFH Fellows
Fall 2008 Fellows (left to right) are Quentin Beresford, associate professor of
politics and government at Edith Cowan University in Western Australia, whose
work considers the ramifications of the Australian government’s official apology to
indigenous people and its parallels with American race relations. He is particularly
interested in the intergenerational impacts of colonization on Aboriginal youth,
crime and alienation. Hilary Holladay is professor of English and the director
of the Jack and Stella Kerouac Center for American Studies at the University of
Massachusetts in Lowell. Her most recent book is Wild Blessings: The Poetry of
Lucille Clifton. She is currently writing a biography of the Beat Movement icon
and raconteur Herbert Huncke. Senior Fellow William Freehling is completing
a documentary book, Secession Redebated: Virginia’s Showdown in 1961,
composing a collection of essays, Disunion Revisited: Shorter Descriptions, Longer
Perspectives, and completing research on his next book, Lincoln’s Room for Growth:
A Great President’s Early Presidential Stumbles. Philip Levy’s project, Weems
to Walmart: The Story of George Washington’s Boyhood Home, has involved
extensive archaeological research on Ferry Farm, a 300-year-old property. Levy is an
associate professor of history at the University of South Florida. He is the recipient
of the 2008-2009 Edna and Norman Freehling Fellowship in South Atlantic
Studies. Nathan Currier’s project, War Music, describes his personal journey
while composing a full-length musical work based on a contemporary translation
of The Iliad by the British poet Christopher Logue. Currier is a classical composer
and musician and recipient of a lifetime achievement award from the American
Academy of Arts and Letters. He is on the faculty at the University of Virginia. He is
interested in the expression of war through art, and in the impact of war on artists.
11
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Virginia Foundation for the Humanities
2008 Board of Directors
Brooks Miles Barnes
Charles M. Guthridge
Eastern Shore Public Library
Accomac, Virginia
Charles M. Guthridge Associates
Richmond, Virginia
Peter Blake
Ronald L. Heinemann
Virginia Community College System
Richmond, Virginia
Hampden-Sydney College
Hampden-Sydney, Virginia
Robert H. Brink
Jo Ann M. Hofheimer
General Assembly of Virginia
Arlington, Virginia
Randolph Church
Hunton and Williams
McLean, Virginia
Audrey Davis
Alexandria Black History Museum
Alexandria, Virginia
Rhoda Dreyfus
Charlottesville, Virginia
John P. Fishwick, Jr.
Lichtenstein, Fishwick & Johnson
Roanoke, Virginia
Virginia Beach, Virginia
Maurice A. Jones
The Virginian-Pilot
Norfolk, Virginia
Anna L. Lawson
Daleville, Virginia
James D. Lott
Stuart Hall
Staunton, Virginia
Cassandra Newby-Alexander
Norfolk State University
Norfolk, Virginia
2008 National Book Festival
Members of the VFH Center
for the Book staff attended the
2008 National Book Festival,
sponsored by the Library of
Congress and First Lady Laura
Bush, on September 27. At a
“Pavlion of the States” Virginia
table, they were joined by Roy
Makes a Car author Mary
Lyons and by author and
sports celebrity Tiki Barber.
Walter Rugaber
Meadows of Dan, Virginia
Barbara J. Fried
Fried Companies, Inc.
Crozet, Virginia
Lisa Guillermin Gable
The Brand Group
Upperville, Virginia
Michael J. Galgano
James Madison University
Harrisonburg, Virginia
Robert C. Vaughan, III
Virginia Foundation for the Humanities
Charlottesville, Virginia
William C. Wiley
Ascential Equity
Richmond, Virginia
Robin Traywick Williams
Crozier, Virginia
back: Tiki Barber, Susan Coleman,
Mary Chute (IMLS Deputy Director
for Libraries), and Kevin McFadden.
front: Nancy Damon
Photo by Tony Hildenrick, Institute for
Museum and Library Services